Abstract

The Reserve Bank's triennial Consumer Payments Survey (CPS) provides a detailed snapshot of
how Australian consumers make payments. The 2016 CPS recorded information on around 17,000
day-to-day payments made by over 1,500 participants during a week. The data show that
Australian consumers continued to switch from paper-based ways of making payments such as
cash and cheques, towards digital payment methods (particularly debit and credit cards). Cards
were the most frequently used means of payment in the 2016 survey, overtaking cash for the first
time. Contactless ‘tap and go’ cards are an increasingly popular way of making payments,
displacing cash for many lower-value transactions. Despite these trends, cash still accounts for a
material share of consumer payments and is intensively used by some segments of the population.
Payments using a mobile phone at a card terminal are a relatively new feature of the payments
system and this technology was not widely used at the time of the survey. However, consumers
are increasingly using their mobile phones to make online and person-to-person payments.
Similarly, consumers are using automatic payments, such as direct debits, more frequently.